Archive for September 29th, 2009

I like Kurt Russell. I think he’s a cool guy, a decent actor, and I suspect he has a lot of fun at work. Whenever I see a Kurt Russell movie, I get the sense that he’s just loving what he’s doing. Remember Captain Ron? Or Tango and Cash? Or Escape from New York? Wait: Big Trouble in LittleChina. Watch it again, and watch his face. He loves this. He loves doing what he does.

The only movie that made me think he wasn’t happy was Stargate. He was Col. O’Neill in the original film, playing a much darker version of the character than Richard Dean MacGyver Anderson would later play on the TV series Stargate SG-1. Russell’s O’Neill was a tragedy in fatigues, a man who had suffered a terrible crisis that caused him to leave the military and let his hair grow. Anderson’s O’Neill was a comedian in space. The fact that I didn’t get the sense that Russell was happy is testament to his acting.

Well, I guess he misses that chance to act dark and disturbed; Kurt wants back into the Stargate franchise. But he doesn’t want to be involved with the new series, Stargate Universe. He wants to star in a sequel to the original film, a sequel that ignores the TV shows and picks up where the movie left off. Apparently, James Spader is also okay with the idea. This opens a really cool door: a big, dark, grim Stargate 2 movie.

The movie has been greenlit based on the Russell/Spader interest alone. So it will probably be made, especially in this Hollywood climate of Remakes and Sequels Only. If it happens, though, I have five requests:

Let real time flow. Let this movie take place 15 years after the original, so we can see how the movie versions of the characters progressed outside of the TV show.

Give us an “it was a different reality” wink and nod so superfans don’t get all upset about the differences between the show and the movie. Abrams’ Star Trek did this quite well.

Do not put Amanda Tapping in it. I liked her on the Stargate TVshows. However, she looks a lot like someone I once got my flirt on with, but then never called again, only to have her angrily corner me on it a year later.

Do put William Shatner in it. He and Spader have a cool dynamic (check Boston Legal), and his presence would be a fantastic marketing nod to the whole Shatnerless Star Trek situation. I think it would be cool to have Shatner play the U.S. president.

Kurt has to have that haircut again, that crew cut so crisp you could sharpen your knife on it. I often think about that crew cut, and wonder if my life had been different if I’d had one like that.

In unrelated news, we’re running a contest on Starbase 66, The International Star Trek and Science Fiction Podcast. Here’s how it works: over three episodes, we will pepper our conversations with blatant lies. After those three shows, we’ll ask you to list the lies. The first show with lies was the latest one, No. 32. Two more to go, people. You can talk about this in the Simply Syndicated forums. In fact, you should.

The person who identifies the most will win an autographed picture of me when I was a kid. It’s a good picture; I was wearing a diaper.